Industrial facilities use communication networks to transmit and receive information and data. The industrial facilities can include various industries and applications such as process or industrial manufacturing, building automation, substation automation, and automatic meter reading. The communication networks can use a variety of communication network protocols. Several protocols have been developed for power system automation.
Substations in high and medium-voltage power networks include primary devices such as electrical cables, lines, bus bars, switches, power transformers and instrument transformers, which are generally arranged in switch yards and/or bays. These primary devices are operated in an automated way via a Substation Automation system (SAS). The SAS includes secondary devices, so-called Intelligent Electronic Devices (IED) which are responsible for protection, control and monitoring of the primary devices.
The IEDs may be assigned to hierarchical levels, for example 3 levels being the station level (upper level), the bay level (middle level), and the process level (lower level), the process level being separated from the bay level by a so-called process interface. FIG. 1 shows a conventional SAS 100 configured into 3 hierarchical functional levels. The levels shown include a station level (top level) 130 with a Human-Machine Interface (HMI) 136 connected to a station 134 (typically a computing device) providing a user interface, as well as the gateway 131 connecting the control center 135 (e.g., having process controllers) of the SAS 100 which includes one or more process controllers to the IEDs in the bay level 120 shown as IED1 (from) Vendor 1 121, IED2 (from) Vendor 2 122, and IEDn (from) Vendor n 123 via the station bus 125. The HMI 136 is coupled for user monitoring of the IEDs 121-123.
The IEDs 121-123 comprise electronic sensors for sensing voltage, and current protection, for control and measurement of the primary devices 111, 112, 113 (e.g., electrical cables, lines, bus bars, switches, power transformers and instrument transformers) in the process level 110, connected by a process bus 115 through process interfaces 116, 117 and 118. A control center 135 is shown which is connected via the gateway 131 to the IEDs 121-123. A system configuration tool 140 is shown connected to an IED tool (1 . . . n) block 132 that represents a plurality of IED tools (1 . . . n) for configuring the IEDs 121-123 from the different vendors. IEDs can also be located at level 1 or at level 3.
The IEC 61850 standard from the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) is a standard for communication networks and systems in a SAS, which recommends interoperability amongst devices from various manufacturers/vendors using common engineering models, data formats and communication protocol. The IEC 61850 protocol standard for SAS enables the integration of all protection, control, measurement and monitoring functions by one common protocol. The IEC 61850 protocol provides high-speed substation applications, station wide interlocking and other functions which need intercommunication between the devices. All IEC 61850 compliant devices connected to the SA network are called IEDs that perform the required functions (protection, local and remote monitoring and control, etc.).
In order to allow free allocation of functions to IEDs from different vendors such as for SAS 100 to support interoperability and confirm the operation functions (protection, local and remote monitoring and control, etc.) of the substation, the IEC 61850 communication standard has formally defined all known functions of a SAS which are modeled into logical nodes (LNs) that are grouped and arranged under different logical devices. Logical Devices (LDs) are virtual devices that exist to enable aggregation of LNs performing similar functions. The LN is the part of an IED that represents a function in the IED including protection, control, monitoring and metering functions of different substation equipment, which communicates with other LNs that may be implemented in a separate IED from different vendors and at a different level.
IEC 61850-6 has defined Extensible Markup Language (XML)-based Substation Configuration description language (SCL), to integrate the LNs of IEDs to the substation structure and to accomplish interoperable engineering data exchange for distributed substation automation system by using configuration tools and integration tools of different manufacturers. The SCL file is used as a standard to build a SAS.
Although each IED conforms to the IEC 61850 standard and all IEC 61850 compliant engineering tools are intended to be interoperable, each IED must be configured via its own proprietary configuration tool to generate the IED capability description (ICD) file as an input to system engineering. Due to this requirement, SAS integration and engineering is heavily dependent on proprietary configuration tools from IED vendors. Despite functionality (indicated in single-line diagrams) of the substation and the protection and control functions of the SAS being available through system specification and the IEC 61850 standard formally defining the functions in a standardized way using LNs with Systems Specification Descriptions (SSDs), system engineering is unable to start system configuration without having the specific ICD files of the IED types. This is because the IEDs vary based on provided functionality and data objects in terms of LNs, and no standard IED capability templates files are readily available. Accordingly, proprietary IED vendor specific configuration tools are required to configure the ICD template files for each IED type. Some IED configuration tools also require an additional license for configuration.
Furthermore, if the system integrator goes with a specific IED type where each IED type varies based on provided functionality and data objects in terms of LNs, this limits the flexibility to find proper IED type to configure the required functions available from multiple vendor IED types in a cost optimal way if all required functionality is not covered by the selected IED types. Despite the use of proprietary IED vendor specific configuration tools, a large amount of manual effort is, however, required for interactions between functions from IED types during initial planning and designing. Furthermore, additional configuration effort is required if the version of the ICD file that was used in system engineering is different from connected IED versions which can result in increased re-commissioning effort and faults during system operation.